


Revolutionary

by wadapan



Category: Beyblade
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Original Character(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25450189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wadapan/pseuds/wadapan
Summary: Luke’s girlfriend drags him to a Beyblade tournament.A short story about fans, and other things that spin.





	Revolutionary

Insofar as I could remember, Mira had only ever asked something of me twice in our relationship. The first was when she’d asked me out to begin with. The second was when she’d asked me to go to the Beyblade tournament with her.

I had agreed without hesitation or inquiry, because I’d hesitated when she’d asked me out (more from surprise than for consideration) and I was somehow able to clock that she was behaving similarly out-of-character on the latter occasion. The truth was that it really confused me, because she was acting like it was as big a deal to her as initiating our relationship had been in the first place. As though she was putting herself out there and was afraid that she’d be ridiculed— _crushed_ , to use the word she’d used one night when telling me what it had been like waiting for rejection—even though we’d been going steady for a bit over three months and I’d already seen her watching fucking spinning tops on her phone countless times. The first time, I hadn’t batted an eyelid, because I watched tons of weirdass videos like that every day, but as the weeks had gone by I’d eventually realised that every time I caught her off-guard she’d been engrossed in Beyblades. As though that was all she did when I wasn’t around.

As though she became a completely different person depending on whether or not anyone was watching her, which of course is true of pretty much everyone, and yet was utterly terrifying to discover about this girl that I’d already grown more attached to than I’d been to anyone else in my life prior to that.

The scary part wasn’t really discovering that I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did; that happened regularly enough, and was basically what made the whole thing so intoxicating. Nor was it even the fact that she seemed to have deliberately hidden this aspect of herself from me—which is something that I think would bother a lot of people—because I’ve never really believed in people having some kind of “true self”, that we’d all be better off if everyone was entirely uninhibitedly honest at all times. Honesty’s nice, but people are flawed, and I figure that if we’re able to completely hide those flaws that’s more or less the same as not having them at all.

What scared me was that this was the first time I’d learned something about Mira that made me understand her less. I didn’t understand why it was a big deal to her. I didn’t understand why she thought it was bad enough that she’d act differently when I was around. Most of all, I didn’t understand the appeal of a sport where two competitors stood around while a couple of metal-and-plastic spinning tops banged into one another until one of them stopped. In a way, I guess my internal reaction to the whole thing was a justification all of its own.

When she’d asked me to go to the tournament with her, I’d agreed right away, but from that moment forth I’d felt like I was sitting an exam I hadn’t revised for, an experience that reminded me altogether too much of the last girl I’d dated. I was dead certain that if I didn’t meet whatever expectation lay in Mira’s head, I was going to lose her.

“Look, Luke!” Mira said, pronouncing both words the same way with a big stupid grin on her face. This had become one of her favourite jokes. I was lukewarm on it (her word). “They’re starting,” she said, giving my hand a squeeze and pointing down at the centre of the stadium, “are you Lukeing?”

“Gotta be honest,” I replied quietly, “I can barely see over the guy in front of me.” The dude sitting in the chair below me was at least seven foot, wearing a tank top and absolutely ripped to shreds.

“That sounds like a difficult situation. Have you tried not being such a manlet?” suggested Mira. She had nothing to complain about as she was sitting behind a small child—who I presumed was the bloke’s son, based on the fact that he was wearing an identical tank top—granting her a perfectly clear view of proceedings. A lot of people in the crowd had clothes or banners printed with slogans and graphics; I idly wondered if the tank tops were like that or if the kid just worked out with his dad or something.

“Sorry, I can’t help it, you’re a bad influence on me,” I said, patting her on the head to illustrate my point.

“Oh my god, die,” she laughed, but whatever else she was going to say was drowned out by the voice that boomed from the speakers.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. THE BEYBLADE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP 2020.”

A man with a microphone had walked out onto a plinth near the very centre of the arena, where there was a large bowl-shaped pit. Music blared and several spotlights turned on him, flashing off his metallic polo shirt and bald scalp. His clothes shared a checkerboard pattern, and his collar and pants legs flared out. He physically hurt to look at.

The crowd roared its approval.

“Is he-” _supposed to be the referee_ , I finished in my head, because Mira had whooped loudly the very instant I’d opened my mouth.

“TODAY, YOU BEAR WITNESS,” his cadence fell somewhere between epic-trailer-voice and divine commandment, “TO THE MOST MAGNIFICENT MERCILESS MAELSTROM OF MASTERY EVER TO TAKE PLACE IN A BEYBLADE ARENA. THIS IS THE VORTEX OF VIOLENCE, AND YOU, DEAR VIEWERS, ARE NOW THE EYES OF THE STORM.” I wasn’t sure that statement actually made sense, but he didn’t give me time to reflect on it. “THERE WILL BE FOUR QUARTER-FINALS TODAY. THE FOUR VANQUISHED WILL RETURN HOME WITH NOTHING BUT SHAME. THE FOUR VICTORS WILL SECURE THE CHANCE TO EARN ETERNAL GLORY IN TOMORROW’S FINALS. IN THIS SINGLE-ELIMINATION FORMAT, THE RULES ARE AS FOLLOWS: EACH MATCH-”

“Aww, hell, Simon, would ya get on with it already?” a new voice drawled over the loudspeakers. The crowd fucking lost it. The referee or whatever-the-fuck whirled around, his eyes falling on a figure standing at the edge of the arena. Some of the spotlights moved to follow his gaze.

The new guy was wearing a ten gallon hat, jeans with suspenders, and no shirt.

His spurs were tiny Beyblades.

Somewhat sluggishly, the music switched to something that fell at the intersection between a crooning country song and pounding dubstep. He waited for the noise of the crowd to drop a fraction before continuing. I wondered why his microphone had been live in the first place, and decided that his interruption had been scripted. “We all know the rules of this here showdown, don’t we?” the guy asked, gesturing expansively at the crowd, who agreed loudly.

“Mira, you didn’t explain the rules to me,” I said, leaning right down to make sure she heard me. She startled, as if she’d forgotten I was there or something.

“It doesn’t matter,” she shouted in my face, “It’s super easy, last Bey spinning wins. There’s more to it than that but don’t worry.”

“Okay,” I said, finding myself laughing a bit internally at her word choice, because obviously I was _sooo_ worried about being confused by the Beyblades.

The cowboy guy was talking again, having sauntered up to a central platform. He was twirling something that looked like a gun around one finger. “-introduce the opposition, and quit wastin’ everyone’s time.”

“NOBODY IS UNTOUCHABLE, REVOLVER.” The referee pointed with his free hand. “IT WOULD BEFIT YOU TO REMEMBER THAT, AND TO REMEMBER THE RESPECT YOU HOLD FOR THE INSTITUTION THAT MADE YOU.”

The crowd, which had heretofore apparently been entirely on the cowboy’s side, now put all of their energy behind this rebuttal. “Oh, shiiit,” breathed Mira, then she looked at me and her smile fell a little, and I felt like I was failing everything.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, PLEASE PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER FOR CONTESTANT NUMBER TWO. THAT IS TO SAY, THERE ARE TWO OF THEM. INTRODUCING: THE CYCLONES!”

The music changed again as a pair of individuals emerged from an entryway on the opposite side of the arena. They wore identical white blouses and black trousers, and they walked in step. When they reached their platform, they turned in unison to face opposite sides of the audience. The jumbotron switched so we could see the face of the one looking away from us, whose voice cut through the crowd’s cheers.

“The Cyclones are doppelganging up-”

The one facing our way grinned. “-and we’re gonna _twin!”_

Again, the crowd went crazy, whatever, I was starting to get the impression everyone was just excited at the idea of being at the event more than at whatever was actually happening.

“Beyblades ain’t what it used to be,” remarked the cowboy. He smirked, and drew a golden star-shaped spinning top from a holster, which he connected to the gun-like thing. “Everyone’s got a gimmick.”

Laughter rippled through the audience.

I felt like I was missing some context. Presumably, having a team of more than one person was unusual, but this was the first match I’d ever seen and I had no idea whether that was actually the case. I got the sense that the cowboy was better-known than his opponents; the crowd’s response to the twins was perhaps a little more subdued than their response to the cowboy. Then again, the cowboy’s entrance had been more unexpected, and maybe everyone was already starting to get a little tired of screeching their heads off. I wondered if the twins were allowed to use two Beyblades—surely that would be unfair?

“The last century’s calling, old timer. It wants to tell you-”

The other twin seemed to hesitate for a moment. “-to double-time it!”

What the fuck was this banter?

“ENOUGH TALK. BLADERS AT THE READY. LET THE MATCH COMMENCE IN THREE, TWO, ONE-”

Everyone except me shouted in unison.

_“LET IT RIP!!!”_

I heard the tail-end of the cowboy guy yelling “-haaawww!” as he tore a ripcord from the thing in his hand. His Beyblade shot out into the air.

At the same time, the twins made their move; one of them held the ripcord in place while the other pulled the launcher down at the arena. Their Beyblade—a more graceful thing which I thought might’ve been supposed to evoke a yin-yang symbol—dropped straight down into the pit before them. With an almighty crack, the cowboy’s golden spinning top hit their side of the wall, missing their Beyblade by millimeters.

“Your aim’s sloppy today, Revolver-”

“-don’t tell us you’re suffering from double vision!”

“Oh, believe me, I got y’all dead to rights. But where’s the fun in a one-horse race?”

As the back-and-forth continued, on the jumbotrons above, the scene playing out was re-drawn in real time using computer graphics. The featureless hemispherical arena became a smoldering crater. In the air above the two Beyblades, a pair of tangled sea serpents—one black, the other white—weaved past a charging bull with fire in its eyes.

The spinning tops curled around the walls of the pit in opposite directions for a few seconds, like residual baked beans being sucked into a plughole, and I waited for something to happen.

When one of the tops veered towards one of the little holes on the upper edges of the arena—a pool of lava, on the screens—it looked for a moment like the match would be over without contact even being made. The crowd drew in a great breath, then cheered as the Beyblade barely missed the hole and moved straight back down to the centre. The two tops met, and a high-pitched crack rang out through the arena, echoed by the speakers. Lights flashed. The jumbotrons switched over to show the reaction of a guy in the audience wearing a cowboy hat and blasting a vuvuzela.

“Who do you think’s going to win?” I asked Mira.

“Revolver,” she said without hesitation. “Dude’s a legend. He’s got the better Bey. But I kind of want the Cyclones to win. They’re funny, and Revolver’s kind of an asshole these days. He’s overrated just ‘cause he’s been around from the start; he pioneered a lot of stuff.”

Mira turned out to be right. Over the course of the minute that followed, the Beyblades struck each other a handful of times, before finally the black-and-white one wobbled and fell still.

“THE VICTOR: REVOLVER!” shouted the announcer immediately.

“Nooo!!!” wailed a twin.

The other whirled. “This is all your fault!” The microphones magnified the words, perhaps the first which weren’t on some level intended for the audience.

Any illusion of synchronicity between the two was lost. The cowboy laughed. “Sorry, buckaroos, but it looks like the two of you aren’t big enough for this town.”

A pair of stewards emerged from near the announcer’s platform, and used long poles with magnets on the ends to retrieve the Beyblades. The twins snatched theirs from the pole and stormed off, while Revolver returned his to its holster, doffing his hat to the crowd as he did so.

Perhaps in spite of herself, Mira cheered along with the rest at this.

In the lull between matches, she turned to me. “What are you thinking?” she asked, and I heard the real question she was asking— _What did you think?_ —and chose my next words carefully, because I could never lie to her; she’d learned to parse my subtext as well as I could hers, in her own way. I could’ve talked about how I thought the technology behind the CGI on the screens was cool, or about how I’d found a couple of the competitors’ comments kinda funny, or just about how nice it was to see her so happy, but to do so would’ve been to betray everything I couldn’t say. I had told her so many times that her smile was the most beautiful thing to me, because it had always been true, and yet no matter how many different phrasings I used I worried that she’d take it as a cliche, a dismissal—as though the only purpose of her happiness was to make her more attractive—and I worried that one day I’d run out of new ways of saying it altogether.

“I’m trying to wrap my head around what decides who wins,” I said.

And she launched into a long explanation of Beyblade engineering, about centres of gravity and tip design and launcher types and the relative merits of metal versus plastic and of clockwise versus counterclockwise rotation (or right and left, as she called them, or perhaps it was left and right) and by the time the next match was starting I felt more mystified than ever, because at no point had she explained how exactly the people themselves factored into all this.

“THE SECOND ROUND STARTS NOW. PLEASE WELCOME TO THE ARENA: SPINNERETTE!”

Music, lights, cheering, etc. The screens gave us a close-up of the woman’s entrance; she was beaming directly at the camera, waving. Her outfit was all over the place: she was wearing tight crimson leggings and a sports bra, as if she was at a gym, as if she was competing in an actual physical sport event and not a Beyblade tournament. This illusion was dispelled by the red goggles sitting on her brow, and her elaborately-woven hairstyle. A cloudlike mass of lacy black material hung back around her waist, bobbing with each-

Mira glanced at me, grinned, and looked back at the screen, and my thoughts caught up to me.

Before I’d met my last girlfriend, I’d always kind of assumed that when I got together with someone, I’d have eyes only for them, that all my interest in everybody else would just disappear, despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary. And I’d been right, at first, because I’d been obsessed with her, and every time I’d looked at her another image had been seared into my eyes like a scratch on a camera lens, and every time I’d looked at someone else she’d pulled me back to her, and the scratches had built up until I could barely see, couldn’t bear to look at anyone.

Somebody in the crowd wolf-whistled, and I wanted to strangle them.

Mira never showed an ounce of jealousy around me. When she’d looked at me, she had felt nothing but gladness that I wasn’t bored, that I was paying attention, that I was interested in what was going on, and I knew this for certain because I knew her. Therein lay the guilt I knew so well: guilt for looking, guilt for looking at somebody else, guilt for looking at somebody else without it even mattering.

All of this only magnified the thoughts that had been suffocating me since the start of this whole sorry little tournament arc, namely that there was a gulf between me and Mira, that I was losing her, that I wasn’t good enough for her. Eventually, I started to calm myself down. I told myself that there’s no such thing as a true self, that our identities are defined not just by our thoughts, but by our reactions to those thoughts. I recognised that I was at a Beyblade tournament, and that the whole thing really probably wasn’t a big deal, and that this would all be eminently obvious to any outside observer.

The second competitor’s name was Doc Spin. “Okay, so wait,” I said to Mira. “Are all of their names puns around spinning shit?”

“Not all of them,” Mira laughed. “A lot of them though. Like, uhh. Spincushion, Spinhead. The Spin Man. Loony Spin.”

“You’re making those up,” I grinned, but she talked over me.

“Spin and Tonic. Kingspin. Spinner Colada. Original Spin. Spinister. Spinster. Spinferno. Tailspin-”

“-Those are just real words!”

Doc Spin turned out to be wearing one of the shiny round things doctors wear on their heads, except his was cut to look like a saw blade. “Mira,” I poked her and pointed. “What’s the thing? The forehead thing. The forehead circle. On his head.”

“You mean the mirror?” replied Mira.

“Why would doctors want patients to be able to see their reflections?”

“Oh my god,” she laughed. “Dude, it’s not for the patient, it’s so the doctor can see more clearly, it’s just for reflecting light. It’s got a hole in it, so you fold it down over your eye and it illuminates the thing you’re looking at. But doctors don’t use them any more because of electric lights, I think.”

Doc Spin was a middle-aged man who looked like he could’ve been a real doctor, and I almost asked Mira whether that was true, but decided that’d be fucking stupid.

The match began. On the jumbotrons, a snake and a spider fought. “Oh nooo, Mira, don’t look,” I said to her, because I knew she was fucking terrified of snakes. I made a halfhearted attempt to cover her eyes and she halfheartedly punched me.

“It’s on a screen, doesn’t count!” she protested, because that apparently somehow made all the difference between her not batting an eyelid and her running headlong out into an aquarium gift shop (had I known that aquariums sometimes kept snakes, I would have chosen a different location for our third date). But I already knew this, and she knew that I knew this. I wondered how many audience members didn’t have the same doublethink as Mira; a snake and a spider were, statistically speaking, the combination of animals most likely to trigger a phobia in any given spectator. I didn’t say any of this to Mira then, because she was enjoying herself and wouldn’t really want to talk about her phobia, but I resolved to mention it later.

Spinnerette won. The snake drowned in a bubbling pool of swamp water (read: the Beyblade fell into a hole). She gloated at the balding man, before blowing him a kiss—except she was looking right at the camera, and I had to resist the urge to go on my phone. I looked down instead, and saw the kid in front of us slurping a soda approximately the size of his head through a plastic straw.

“I’m kind of hungry,” I said to Mira. “If I go to the food court real quick, do you want me to get you something? I can get you some fries.” She nodded emphatically at the mention of fries, and leaned back in her chair so I could sort of scooch out past her (I knew Mira didn’t like sitting next to strangers; I’d sat down first so she could stay next to the aisle). She immediately got her phone out, as she was wont to do whenever she wasn’t around me or her other friends.

As I headed down the stairs, the noise of the crowd receded. The food court consisted of a few shuttered units in a row, licensed out to a handful of indistinguishable fast-food chains, with a shared seating area. The seats were mostly empty, but queues were already forming at all of the counters. I joined the one which looked the shortest and waited, watching a janitor mop whirls into the floor. He didn’t notice me—he was listening to music, lost to the world—but I started feeling guilty for staring at him and turned my attention to the menu above the counter, even though I already knew what I was getting.

There were so many different kinds of people in the line with me. I saw a couple of kids spinning on the spot, trying to knock each other over, but most of the people were adults. I felt so out of place. I wished Mira was there with me, but that wouldn’t have made me feel like I belonged; it only would’ve distracted me.

Just as I was starting to worry that I was taking too long, the guys in front of me left with their food. I went up and ordered a box of curly fries (for Mira) and one of their knockoff McFlurries (for me).

“So, enjoying the tournament?” asked the girl as she got me my change.

“Uhh,” I said, my mouth freewheeling as I confirmed that I had in fact entered a social interaction. “Yeah, it’s good,” I said. Then, because that sounded a bit weak, I added “I’m here with my girlfriend.”

“Aww, cute!” she said, and I wondered if she was being sarcastic, before deciding that I was being paranoid. “Y’know, before this week I had no idea people were this into Beyblades! It’s so weird. She having a good time?”

I could see my NotFlurry and the tray of fries sitting on the side behind her. “Um, yeah, I think so!” I replied. I guess she saw me looking, because she turned and picked up the food, sliding it over to me. “Thanks,” I added.

“Well, enjoy yourselves!”

“We will!”

I scooped up the items and headed back to the stands, falling into a speedwalk. The conversation had drained me, and I felt bad for having been drained by it, but I was more or less able to put it out of my mind. Before I even reached the stairs, I could tell from the roar of the crowd that I was late.

Mira was looking up from her phone, looking around, looking for me. We made eye contact and smiled at each other.

“Sorry you missed the start,” she said to me as I gave her the fries. It was a little thing, but I appreciated it; she wasn’t annoyed that I’d taken so long, nor was she asking me to make excuses. It was what it was. Mira had always been like that.

“I’m sorry I missed it too,” I said. In front of us, the dad was rustling around in a bag. He pulled out two packets of crisps, giving one to his kid. “Who’s playing?” I asked Mira, before eating a spoonful of ice cream.

Down below, it looked like there were two kids facing each other. The Beyblades spiralled between them.

“The green-haired kid’s called Rupert Tatum; he usually goes by Roo,” explained Mira. “The one with the blindfold calls himself Buzzkill. He’s kind of a douchebag.”

As we were talking, Buzzkill—the older-looking one of the two—was making an impassioned speech to his opponent.

“Where is the sport in this, little Roo?” said Buzzkill. “This is no real sport! We stand across from each other, and say our words. Meanwhile, the true outcome of our conflict is determined by naught but luck—or worse, by economic privilege. You are nothing but a spectator, little Roo, albeit one with the money to purchase one of the two best seats in the house. Money that has been accrued by tricking all of these people into believing that there is something authentic here, something with meaning, with value!”

“These people are here because they want to be!” Roo retorted. “You think there’s some kinda conspiracy here? You know that’s not true!”

Mira said, “Y’know… I think curly fries might actually be my favourite kind of fries?” She smiled, twirling one in her fingers. Then she looked at me, and her smile went away a bit. “Did we talk about this before?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I mean, it was just what they had, but now that you say it, it kind of makes sense.”

“I guess it does,” said Mira.

The Beyblades span. Buzzkill shouted, “I know your real name, _Rupert Tatum!”_ The speakers magnified his voice over the crowd’s boos.

“Oh yeah? What are you gonna do? Say it in front of all these people? Where’s your honour, man?”

Mira spoke up again. “I was thinking, while you were gone,” she said. “Or, well- I’ve been thinking.”

“Oh?” I replied. We weren’t quite able to meet each other’s eyes. I focused on the ice cream, even though I was starting to give myself brainfreeze.

The Beyblades span.

Buzzkill said, “What is the point of honour, if it isn’t real honour? Everything about you is inauthentic.”

Roo said, “Look at yourself, man! Everything about you is just a cynical cry for attention. You’re not even really blind!”

“I guess it feels like you’ve been trying really hard today,” Mira said. “Lately,” she amended. “And it’s… a lot. And you’ve been kind of quiet, so, umm.”

The Beyblades span.

“That’s right, little Roo!” crowed Buzzkill. “I am the only person here who is _not_ blind. I can see the game for what it is, Roo—the _real_ game, the game behind the game—and I play it well. How else could I have made it this far?”

“I thought you believed it was all luck,” Roo replied.

Mira said, “I don’t know if this is like, a Lauren thing-” I looked away from her “-or if it’s just a _you_ thing, or if it’s just in my head or what. It’s just that you’re treating me like I’m a stranger again somehow, and I don’t get it.” She gestured down at the Beyblades, spinning. “Does it really mean that much to you that I like this?”

I shook my head.

“Then what?”

The Beyblades span.

“Who can say?” said Buzzkill, with a big shit-eating grin on his face. “Who can say what goes on beneath the arena?”

Roo clenched his fists. “Man, give it up already! What’s your malfunction? What do you have against all this?”

I took a second too long to reply, and Mira continued. “I told you what it was like when my family moved here, how I… well, it’s dumb, but Beyblades was kind of the thing, that- it was the first thing that actually let me feel at home? But it wasn’t really a home, it was just a thing I liked. I don’t really think there’s anything particular about Beyblades that made me like it more than anything else, it just… happened. And all the time I spent not talking to anyone, that was all part of that.”

The Beyblades span, and Roo pressed. “You say it’s luck, you think it’s pointless. And you’re right, kind of! But those don’t have to be bad things!”

“Oh?” said Buzzkill. “Please, enlighten me! Prove to me that your actions are motivated by anything more than simple greed.”

“I didn’t ask you to come here with me,” said Mira.

I tried to parse what she was saying. “Didn’t you?” I asked.

“No, I didn’t! I was just telling you it was happening, that I was planning on going, and you were like- you turned it into a whole big thing.”

“Oh,” I said. “So you… wanted to go alone?”

“No! Maybe. It’s complicated. It’s like… part of me really wants you to validate this whole thing, and likes talking about it to you, and likes sitting next to you. But then part of me is like… this is _my_ thing. It’s this tie back to a much older me, who you never met. And like, if you just somehow magically happened to like it, then I guess I’d be fine with that? But you’re trying so hard, and it’s just… and honestly, even if you did like it, it’d be like you liking the shitty version of me who liked it, and I’d hate that. So like… I still like Beyblades, but it’s not the whole of who I am.”

Meanwhile, the Beyblades span, and Roo talked. “When I first started blading, I had nothing. My grades sucked. I had no friends. I just thought Beyblades were cool. Beyblades was the one thing where there was no pressure. Every single person in this audience is capable of stepping up to an arena and letting it rip, and if they lose, that wouldn’t really be a reflection on them. It’s like you said: from the moment we pull the cord, we become spectators.”

“Then why do you all take it so damned seriously?” asked Buzzkill.

“Because we want to, because it’s a way for us to express ourselves, with zero stakes! You put so much effort into coming here just to point at us all and say ha, you’re so stupid. Nobody made you do that. You did it yourself, because you couldn’t bear the thought of people enjoying something you don’t. And that’s why, when I beat you, it’ll be a victory for every single person watching here today!”

The kid sitting in front of us dropped his packet of crisps on the floor. His dad swore, then bent down to sweep them up. Mira and I both looked. The expression on the kid’s face was one of utter devastation. I shared a glance with Mira, who smiled and put a hand over her remaining fries protectively.

“Okay,” I said to her.

“Okay?”

“Yeah, sure, you’re right. I was getting stuck in my head. This doesn’t really do anything for me, personally, but I think I understand why you like it. But we should talk about it afterwards, anyway; I think the match is almost over.”

“Sure,” she said, and she leant over to rest her head on my shoulder.

The Beyblades collided, and she whooped loudly along with the rest of the crowd, right next to my ear. I feigned hurt, and she just laughed, so I whooped back at her.

Then, Mira suddenly hid behind her hands, and I realised she was looking up at the screens, and that the camera was pointed at us. So I waved, and waited for it to cut away, and

**Author's Note:**

> A complete behind-the-scenes commentary explaining the writing process for _Revoutionary_ can be found as an appendix to [the mirrored version available on my blog](https://wadapan.wordpress.com/2020/07/13/revolutionary/2/). If you'd like to find out about my future writing, you can follow me either there or [on twitter](https://twitter.com/TheWadapan). Thank you for reading.


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